Category: Literary (Page 4 of 17)

The following flash fiction was inspired by the people of New York, and the street photography that captures the diversity and excitement of the city. The story, names, and situations are all 100% fictional.   Photo and story by Neil Kramer.

I proposed to Molly today. We’re a good match. We both went to Yale and wrote well-received debut novels. When our  engagement is announced tomorrow, I have no doubt there will be column in the Observer touting us as the next young literary powerhouse couple.

I also respect Molly’s parents.  My Chinese parents have a lot in common with Molly’s  Jewish heritage.   Both families believe in education and high achievement.  Molly and I will create some smart children with our combined Chinese-Jewish DNA.    But it’s too soon to talk about children just yet.  We’ve both heavily committed to our careers, and Molly isn’t sure how long she can keep teaching creative writing at NYU.

I hope Jailyn doesn’t take it hard. I owe so much to her. She was my muse. There would be no novel titled “Main Street, Flushing,” without her.  The character of Evelyn WAS Jailyn.

From the moment I moved into Molly’s Upper East Side condo, I knew the space was too stuffy and quiet for my temperament.  Whenever I hit a blank page in the story, I took the 7 train down to Flushing, and let the culture of my youth bombard my senses — the red ribbons and exotic fruits, the old men playing mahjong and the young women with their cheap pastel umbrellas shielding their eyes from the hot sun.

On the side street, right off the way from the market and herbal store, was a small massage studio.  It was only $15 a hour for a decent massage.  A perfectly legit place.   No hanky panky.   And that’s how I met Jailyn.

I took her for dinner at Liang’s Noodle King. She loved niu rou mian, a beef noodle soup known as a Taiwanese comfort food noodles, and she slurped it up with abandon. She wasn’t refined; she came from Taipei in 2010 with only a high school education, but her spirit was as old as that of the Empress Xuanzong.

She became my muse. We would fuck all night in her tiny apartment, every chance I could, and her lips would taste sweet and salty. When she would fall asleep, spent, I would quietly go to her kitchen table and write for the rest of the night, my creativity endless.

I wrote about Evelyn, a young orphan girl who moved from Taiwan to start a new life in Flushing, Queens.  After the novel was finished, it reached #7 on Amazon’s best-selling fiction of 2013.

Jailyn was proud of my success, and wanted to attend one of my public book readings — the big one at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square — but all my Yale and Manhattan friends were coming that day, and I didn’t think she would feel comfortable.  I was trying to protect her.

She will always be my muse. I will forever remember my time with her, and the way she felt in my arms. But now I’m ready for my literary life with Molly.   My second novel will come out in October, about a young Chinese-American politician and his struggle to become mayor.

I hope that Jailyn understands why it is important for my career that I marry Molly.   I explained it all in the letter I sent to her in the mail.   I’m sure she will. She’s strong. Like all Chinese women.

If you want proof of the existence of ghosts, just look at logic. A person is more complex than a brick, but a building can last for thousands of years. This means that a human being, based on his innate superiority, must exist longer than a brick. And since we all know that death occurs for people, the only reasonable explanation is that the “person” or “entity” continues to live on as a ghost — at least for longer than the lifespan of a brick.

It just makes sense.

The traffic was bumper to bumper in lower Manhattan, so Hunter Horowitz stepped from his car to stretch his legs. It was his last year teaching Philosophy 101 at NYU to a bunch of undergraduates who couldn’t care less about the existence or non-existence of the world.

Hunter looked down the old city block, now traffic-snarled, and knew that, in another dimension, invisible behind the Subarus, Hondas, and trendy boutique store signs hanging in view, his great-grandfather, Mlotek was still pushing his cart along the cobblestone streets and yelling “Toys for Sale” in Yiddish.

Stefan hadn’t stepped foot in Coney Island since 1975. Too many bad memories. It was a cesspool back then, attracting the lowest of humanity. Today, the area attracts gentrified “weirdos,” those who stroll in after a fancy brunch to show off their store-bought tattoos and fake breasts in selfies on Instagram. Back then, were real weirdos, men and women who yawned at the one remaining freak show on Ocean Boulevard as being too tame. A sword swallower will never impress an ex-marine living off of food stamps who once sliced his leg off with a Japanese sword on a dare, just to win a bottle of scotch.

Stefan had hallucinatory nightmares about Coney Island; even now, he could still see the lights, swirling colors, and Satanic clown faces of the fading murals, marred by the urban graffiti.  Stefan would often wake up all sweaty and alone, the rancid smell of polluted salty sea air in his lungs.

Today, thirty-nine years later to the day he left, Stefan made the decision to return to Coney Island, his former home. It was time to forgive those who hurt him in the past.

He would forgive the three black teenagers and their junkie mother who beat the shit out of him behind the Flintstones pinball machine, kicking him in the groin and face, mugging him of the five dollars of allowance money.

He would forgive his parents, and that heated argument on the beach that day, when they were slapping each other and forgetting him in the ocean as he almost drowned in the rising waves.

He would forgive the elderly man who managed the rickety Wonder Wheel, and left him stranded in the car alone, on the top rung, swinging in the wind, for three hours until the fire department arrived and fixed the faulty electrical switcher.  This was the most horrifying experience of his life. He was a young boy at the time, and there he was, looking down at the smallness of the world and knowing the dread of death.

Stefan was sure the old man who ran the Wonder Wheel in 1975 was probably deceased himself, but Stefan would inquire about his final resting place so he could place a bouquet of flowers in remembrance on his grave, completing his mission.

Of all the 8,954 couples breaking up this afternoon in the five boroughs of New York, Bruce was the last to leave from his apartment alone and without a future, not stepping onto the hot pavement of East 23rd Street until 5:48PM.  

On his right shoulder, he balanced a linen camping bag with his everything he owned — three t-shirts, a heavy yellow beach towel, some J Crew underwear he recently ordered online, a pair of ripped jeans, his college French books, an old DVD box set of The Sopranos, and a dead cat.

The dead cat was an unexpected addition. As he packed, Bruce argued with his girlfriend, Judith, over the ownership of Fluffy, the black and white striped American short hair.   Judith caved in, as usual, but always the performance artist,  took the revolver from the hat box in the closet, shot Fluffy in the head, and with the blood dripping down her arm, she handed the cat over to Bruce as a final parting gift.

The following flash fiction was inspired by the people of New York, and the street photography that captures the diversity and excitement of the city. The story, names, and situations are all 100% fictional.   Photo and story by Neil Kramer.

Teddy was an oversharer. Last year, on his blog, he posted several personal stories about his bout with depression, rants about his ex-wife, and semi-nude photos of himself sitting in a hot tub during a business trip to Northern California. This cost him his job at Goldman Sachs, where managers frowned on such openness.

After six months unemployment, Teddy found a job with a NY technology firm that encouraged innovation and the use of social media. 

On June 21, after a long day’s work, he stood in the office lobby and adjusted his Google Glass strapped to the sides of his head.  As the company’s community liaison, he was assigned to do a live video broadcast of the moment of sunset of the Summer Solstice.

Teddy researched the significance of the event in preparation for the day.   He learned that “solstice” literally meaning the “stopping” of the sun.  He knew that the summer solstice was celebrated by thousands across the world who believed in the sun’s power, and who associated it with life and fertility.

As the sun started her descent and the entire city was bathed in the golden haze,  Teddy was surprised to find himself crying, as if all the disappointment in his life was released by the brightness, much as the Druids had once felt standing at Stonehenge in their spotless white robes.

Teddy immediately shut off his Google Glass and tossed it to the floor, like a piece of litter. This moment of sunset was too special, too personal, and too profound to be shared haphazardly to viewers on the the company’s website, just another viral video manufactured for the masses.    In one ray of light, everything changed.  Here was God was speaking to him, directly.

The video setting sun never made it to the live feed.   The next day, Teddy was fired from his job, and he was relieved.

The following flash fiction was inspired by the people of New York, and the street photography that captures the diversity and excitement of the city.  The story, names, and situations are all 100% fictional.   Photo and story by Neil Kramer.

Honey, Sweetie, Hot Mama. Sherry had heard them all. She was an expert in wolf whistles, deciphering the lout’s jerk-level from the tone and the pitch.

New York was a tough place for a looker like Sherry. The men showed no respect. Every guy, from the Wall Street CEO to the delivery man thought that he was Prince Harry, and she was the royal prize.

Sherry didn’t hate the men of New York.   She hated herself.  Because she knew that when the time came when no one admired her ass for the precious jewel of her youth, that she would miss it.

The following flash fiction was inspired by the people of New York, and the street photography that captures the diversity and excitement of the city.  The story, names, and situations are all 100% fictional.   Photo and story by Neil Kramer.

When Anthony Vizzi was fifteen years old, at 7:40AM, on the way to his job at the warehouse, he stopped at Caffé Napoli on Hester Street and ordered an espresso. He knew that he was too young to be drinking coffee, and that his mother would object, but since the night before, he had lost his virginity to Angela Finaldi, he felt that he deserved an espresso, if not for the taste, which was as sour as the dark hidden spaces between Angela’s ample thighs, but for the symbolism of the event.

Eighty years to the day, Maurice, the forty-something morning-shift waiter at Caffé Napoli, noticed that Mr. Vizzi was absent from his usual table. Mr. Anthony Vizza had ordered an expresso at 7:40AM from the same table at Caffé Napoli for the last eight decades. Maurice immediately ran to the manager, Mr. Scuza, and told him of his concerns about Anthony’s absence. Mr. Scuza immediately called 911. Something was wrong.

Ten minutes later, police officers from the 13th and 1st precincts arrived at the door of Anthony Vizzi, along with the fire department, senior members of the Italian Fraternity of Hester Street, an ambulance from Saint Francis, representatives of the McNeil Funeral Home, friends from the nearby Jewish and Chinese community boards, and Mr. Scuza, manager of Caffé Napoli. Maurice, the waiter on duty, tagged along, carrying a take-out espresso for Mr. Vizzi, just in case this was all some horrible mistake.

It was as if the entire community was there to pay respect to Anthony Vizzi, the man who learned to appreciate the pleasure of a woman’s touch when he lost his virginity to Angela Finaldi eighty years ago. But Anthony Vizzi opened the door to his apartment. He was wearing a snazzy seersucker suit and looked not dead, but quite healthy and fit for a man of his age.

“Thank God you’re alive!” said Mr. Scuza, the café manager. “I was so worried.”

It was a false alarm, and off went the police officers from the 13th and 1st precincts, the fire department, senior members of the Italian Fraternity of Hester Street, an ambulance from Saint Francis, representatives of the McNeil Funeral Home, friends from the nearby Jewish and Chinese community boards, and Mr. Scuza, manager of Caffé Napoli, back to their usual day.

The only one who remained at the door was Maurice, the waiter on duty. He was taking this experience the hardest of them all. Ever since his time in Catholic school, he believed in the sacred order of things, and for eighty years, Anthony Vizzi stopped by for his espresso.

Except for today.

“I don’t understand,” Maurice said to Mr. Vizzi. “You are in fine health. Why didn’t you come today for your usual espresso?”

“I wasn’t in the mood. I decided to walk up to Mrs. Wang’s place in Chinatown and try some of that Chinese health tea she’s always talking about.”

“But you’ve been having an espresso for eighty years! Eighty years!” Maurice repeated. “No disrespect to you, Mr. Vizzi, but it seems “irresponsible” for you to stop and go in another direction so late in life.”

Mr. Vizzi never finished high school, but he was a keen observer of human nature. You couldn’t survive in the warehouse all those years without learning a thing or two about people. And he instinctively knew that that Maurice’s anxiety was about his own personal fears over the fragility of life than anything to do with Anthony Vizzi’s eighty years of espresso-drinking.

“You’re never too old to change,” Anthony Vizzi told the forty-something Maurice. “I know you hear people say that and you think it’s all bullshit. But it’s not. Look at me. Now you have proof that it isn’t bullshit. You’re never too old to change.”

Maurice nodded slowly. He had just received a great gift. He took a sip from Mr. Vizzi’s take-out espresso and planned his future away from the Caffe Napoli.

It didn’t take Marc long to figure out secret of living in the city.  “New York is theater,” he would say, from his studio on East 43rd Street.   “You leave your apartment and enter stage right.  No one cares about YOU. You are the role you play.  Either it is assigned against your will, or you create it with your own hands, like a special piece of Play-doh.”

And Marc certainly made myself.   He asked for no help.  He was taught by his hard-working parents never to ask for a hand-out.   It was his parents who built “The Gaucho House” from scratch — the first faux Argentine steakhouse ever seen in the Buffalo area.  Yes, Marc ran from home as fast as possible, at the age of seventeen, but he always respected the self-sufficiency of his parents.

It was in this spirit of kinship that Marc became his own guide.  He devised a look that intimidated and a way of speaking that invited envy.   And when introduced to others at parties, he would say his name was — Markk.

Growing up in Queens, Lien dreamed of one day having a wedding in her favorite spot in the New York – the manicured French Conservatory Garden in Central Park.  Under the flowery arches, and before the statues of the two Maidens dancing in the shaded pool, Lien would speak her vows of love and companionship to the man who would be her husband.

Lien’s two young sisters, Amy and Grace, were intelligent and deserving women, and Lien was proud of her role in guiding them to maturity. But attending their double weddings this afternoon, in the very spot she had yet to stand, dressed in black like the spinster she had become, felt like two sharpened knives thrust into her chest.